I very much enjoyed reading Rebuilding
Justice: Civil Courts in Jeopardy and Why You Should Care by Rebecca Love Kourlis and Dirk Olin,
and would encourage anyone concerned with access to justice issues to read it.
In this 2011 text, Kourlis and Olin discuss several ways in which our judicial
system is not adequately serving the public's need.
My praise of this book is high. I have not recently seen any other
book distill for the lay person the problems facing our judiciary, and lay out
different techniques for addressing the identified problems. I believe that this book can and should
encourage readers to consider and take seriously the needs of the judicial
branch of government.
Each chapter to this book addresses a
specific weakness in our judicial system, and raises particular possible
solutions, many of which reflect existing experiments already in place in various
jurisdictions. For instance, the second
chapter illustrates the highly politicized method of judicial selection in the
federal bench, explains how the politicization has such a negative effect on
the citizen’s trust of the judiciary, and offers alternative selection
mechanisms. The fifth chapter discusses
the impact of the cost of discovery on the accessibility of the court systems
on non-wealthy members of society. The eighth
chapter focuses in on the extent to which the traditional adversarial system
fails to address complex issues in family law are addressed—and it presents and
innovative approaches around the country towards combating those issues.
This book offers many suggestions for
fixing the problems it describes. Each
reader will likely find suggestions that they find very valuable and other
suggestions which they find problematic or wrong. I personally was very pleased to read about
innovations in the family court arena, but thought that the book’s issues with
e-discovery did not factor in the fact that extensive e-discovery is sometimes
the only way to uncover deception or duplicity. In fact, I take a particular
pleasure if the fact that this book presents ideas with which I agree along with
idea with which I disagree. Where I in agreement with all of the book’s
suggestions, I might be disinclined to
consider the true message of this book—that citizens have an interest in the
ways in which our courts function.
In other words, the most important take
home lesson from this book is that every citizen should deeply care about
functionality and fairness of the judicial process because our democratic
system is dependent on it. A secondary take home lesson is that organizing the
judiciary involves serious consideration of whether the court rules, methods of
access, and other aspects of the organization of the court, properly and
sufficiently serve the constituents of the system, namely the general
citizenry.
Should this book be released in a second
edition, I hope there will be a little more discussion more fully explaining why
a functioning judiciary is so important to our republic. Although the book very clearly demonstrates
how access to our legal system has decreased for many individuals, the book
appears to invite its readers to presume why the problem matters—which is not
inherently obvious to those unfamiliar with the courts. My personal view is
that elementary exposure to contract theory will convince all readers that the
absence of a functioning court system will lead many individuals to problematic
self-help techniques, like use of personal weapons or the employment or
engagement of gang or mafia protections.
A functioning civil court system provides a mechanism for citizens of a
society to have their disputes resolved without resorting to dangerous
self-help techniques. Once readers
already understand this premise, they should appreciate the issues presented in
this discourse.
In short, I see this book as the
introduction to an important discussion society should be having about what we
expect of our courts, and I personally hope that I am able to contribute to
this discussion in a valuable way.
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